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Most traders dont fail at trading because it is hard. They fail because they are not willing to put in the work to create a detailed plan, test the plan, and then follow the plan.
These traders for sure are just people who are thinking that trading is easy money or like a get-rich-quick scheme.
Strategy comes with work and time. You need to build your own strategy, practice it, and master it.
Capital preservation is the best also here because as long as you have the capital, you still can trade, and you can still apply your strategy.
That's why risk management strategy is important, like what OP explained with risk: reward ratio, that is working.
And risk management is probably the skill that less interest gets from traders, since those interested in this market want to learn to identify the top and the bottom and nothing else.
However even if someone was an expert at identifying the tops and bottoms of the market if they do not know how to reduce the risk they are taking then sooner or later they will lose several times in a row to the point that it will be impossible for them to recover from the losses they have accrued during those trades.